I've noticed an annoyance in VX. Not so much a technical issue but a suggestion.

When I go back to redefine a feature and hit "cancel" as in I changed my mind and don't want to change the feature it not only cancels the command but it deletes it from the history manager. I can undo the change but I find undo to be risky at times.

I suggest "cancel" does 2 things. When redefining a feature "Cancel" only cancels the "redefine" command and leaves the feature in the history. IF cancel is used on a new feature it will cancel the comman but since there was never a feature for the new command then it deletes the changes.

Ah, but the redefine command re-loads the data of the feature to the command that defined it, so you are not actually "in" a redefine command, you are in the extrude, shell or other geometry creation command. I think that once you get your head around it, the current system is most logical. If you hit redefine, the feature does not exist unless you actually do redefine it - minimum input is to hit OK, meaning you want to keep the feature. Hit Cancel if you don't want the feature to be created.

NOW, lets say I need to change the length of an extrusion in the third command.

Now lets say I decide I really don't want to change after all but the command is open after I played around with some preview info. So out of habit I hit CANCEL as in a I want to cancel the change and just go back to the original length of the extrusion feature.

VX will CANCEL the creation of the extrusion as the third step and everything after it will be blitzed. But really i didn't want to destroy that feature just cancel whatever I played with.

(example of a Windows bug for a while would be clicking on the date to open up Windows Calender to check the date in a month or so. If you hit cancel it just goes back to the real date, but if you hit OK then you change the system clock to the month you were looking at)

My suggestion is that if the command is in the middle of a part history then CANCEL will only cancel the changes but keep that feature. It's safer that way and I won't accidentally delete features I wanted to change. Besides if we knew we wanted to delete a feature there is the delete comman built in to the part feature.

What Bobf4fun is actually referring to is in a point release of version 11.
When you issue a command (you can insert your own example here) that fails, a window will pop up asking if you would care to retry the command. If you select RETRY, the interface will return exactly like is was when you issued the command. You can now change your entity selections and/or values on the form and RETRY the command.
This will save you from having to reenter all the inputs and reselect all the geometry.

Now back to REDEFINE. Chris is right, you are in the middle of a parametric history and if you CANCEL a command it is the same as when you first entered the command; if you cancelled then, the command went away. Now anything related to it will also fail.

If you decide not to change the command, hit OK.

If you were "stepping through the history" and clicked on EDIT (an alternative editting method) and you CANCELLED, hit UNDO until the command is redisplayed in the lower window.

I want to stand up for cncsurf. I've learned to be really careful about hitting the escape command when I'm running through a history operation, or editing an existing history operation. But hitting the escape key is a very hard habit to break and I still hit the escape key sometimes when I'm thinking that I didn't want to change anything. So I have a couple of suggestions on how to resolve things.

1. If you've asked to redfine a history operation (as apposed to adding a feture), include an extra button called "Delete" in addition to the OK and Cancel buttons.

2. Clicking on Delete will remove this operation, as Cancel does with the current versions of VX.

3. Clicking the OK button will apply any changes you've made to values.

4. Clicking the Cancel button, or pressing the Escape key, should reapply the operation using the previous values, thus "discarding" any changes you've made to the values in the options dialog.

Making these changes would mean that people don't have to retrain themselves to work the way VX wants them to work. The idea is that escape should put things back to the way they were, not delete an operation, if you're redefining a feature.

-- John

P.S. I use VX in my hobby business. By day, I'm a software designer for consumer software, and I specialize in usability. If any of you have been around computers long enough, my first product was called The Norton Commander.

One way to avoid this problem is to avoid using the redefine unless it is necessary. By setting your pick filter to feature, you can double click any feature (your extrude for example) and show the asscoiated parameters. You can then double click the parameter and modify them. Then a regen should implement the change. If you decide against the change at any time during this process, a cancel will not delete your op. You can also use the same process to go back to you original params.

Another more robust option is to use the right click > Open/Close option in the history tree. Using this will allow you to view/mod all parameters associated with a command without actually reentering the command. This way there is no way to accidentially cancel a command from the history.

Good suggestions Chris G. The open in history would be great deal more useful if the selected dimension/parameter was highlighted in the display. I find it quite difficult figuring out what dimension is what otherwise.
Off course the first method is solves that problem - is it less robust?
Naming the dimensions you may wish to change is also a great approach. However I have had problems with the naming effecting the variables associated. Any idea when or if this has been resolved?
Also the renaming method is clumsy. Renaming in the history tree using the F2 whilst selected would be consistent with Windows convention. Maybe even better would be the option to name/rename a dimension when the Input Dimension Value window pops up. Yeap, I reckon that would be my preferred approach.

It is only less robust in that it only displays dimensions that have effected the geometry. i.e. If you do not apply draft to an extrude, then no draft dimension is available for edit. The Open/Close history, however, provides an input for every applicable parameter.

One way to solve your problem is to combine the methods. You can double click the feature, then open the history entry. It would then be easier to tell which dimensions are which, and have the option to use the parameters that may not have been applied in the original feature.